


Flux

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, LGBTQ Themes, Original Character(s), Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor needs some local knowledge to outwit aliens again and runs into an orphan boy in an alleyway. But Charlie's looking for a different kind of escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flux

**Author's Note:**

> The Doctor, Amy, and Rory, featuring an original trans character, because why not have trans rep, and also because I wanted to explore the Time Lord's concept of gender. 
> 
> Charlie's a 15-year-old trans boy living in a girls' residential home.

He was sitting on the wall, scraping his knuckles absent-mindedly on the bricks, when three strangers hurtled around the corner and down the alley.

They were an odd sort, he noted, looking down at them. Even for around here. One of them was even wearing a bow tie, for god’s sake. But the strangest thing was perhaps the way they were speaking.

‘Is it gone, Doctor? The Raglofax, is it gone?’ the girl asked. The strong Scottish accent put her a long way from home.

‘Good question. Rory, go check round the corner, see if it’s gone.’ The man named Rory grumbled, but he went anyway.

‘You know, if it weren’t for the fact you’d just saved my life…’ he said.

‘Technically, it wouldn’t have taken your life,’ the Doctor replied, pulling off the tweed jacket he was wearing and taking in a few deep breaths. ‘Now, we just need to find somewhere that’ll lead us underground, then we should be able to force it back through whatever portal it came from.’

The girl looked up and down the alley, red hair glinting in the afternoon sunshine, and finally spotted him.

‘Hello!’ she asked brightly. ‘You from round here?’ The Doctor swung round and beamed when he saw him.

‘Excellent, look, Amy, local knowledge. What’s your name?’

‘Charlie,’ he replied, trying to decide if he wanted to jump down and talk to them. He’d climbed up here to escape, after all. The prospect of his History class after lunch, where half the class would call him names and throw paper at him, hadn’t exactly appealed.

‘We’re looking for, well, a sewer, perhaps. Or a subway line, although I don’t suppose a town this size really has one.’ Charlie thought for a moment, decided that he was far too curious about these strangers, and slid down the wall to reply.

‘There’s a grate covering the sewer just around the corner,’ he said, craning his neck to see them. Now that he wasn’t three feet above them, he realised just how tall they were in comparison. ‘It’s not easy to get in, though,’ he added.

He was about to point them in the right direction when Rory gave a shout and started running towards them.

‘Doctor, Amy, we’ve got company!’

‘How long have we got?’

‘I’d say twenty seconds, have you got a plan?’ Rory asked, turning to look at Charlie. ‘Who’s this?’

‘The plan,’ the Doctor said. ‘Come on, better run!’

He gave Charlie a slight push, and there was a brief moment’s hesitation about running off with three strangers who were talking almost complete nonsense. But he _did_ think they were having a much more interesting time than anyone in this town ever would, and that was confirmed when a huge black shape entered the alley behind them.

‘What the _hell_ is that?’

‘No time to explain, run!’ one of the others shouted, and he dashed down towards the other end of the alley, leading them on to the deserted footpath.

‘It’s just by the park,’ he yelled over his shoulder, but he didn’t need to. His new companions had much longer legs, and also looked like they had experience running from large, imposing creatures, so they were already right beside him.

‘Hurry up!’

Charlie led them across the street, nearly tripping over his shoelaces as he skidded down towards the large sewer pipe. This hadn’t exactly been what he’d planned when he bunked off, and the scuffed leather shoes weren’t agreeing with the high-speed chase, but he made it down and the Doctor appeared next to him, pulling out a strange little device.

‘Lovely spot, this’ll do nicely,’ he affirmed, as the thing he was holding lit up and started making a high-pitched noise.

‘Come on Doctor, we don’t have time for this!’ The creature was limbering down the path behind them as the grate clanged open.

‘How did you do that?’ he asked, following the Doctor inside as his stomach recoiled from the intense smell. Fortunately, this section of pipe hadn’t been used for years, and the smell was only a lingering reminder, instead of something they might have had to wade through in another pipeline.

‘Sonic screwdriver,’ the Doctor explained quickly, giving it another little flash. ‘Rory, wait until it comes down, and get behind it, like we said. Amy, this way, come on.’

Rory disappeared from view as the creature blocked the entrance — apparently, it wasn’t interested in him at all.

As the Doctor lifted his screwdriver again — _was_ it a screwdriver? — Charlie backed up. They obviously had a plan already, and he didn’t want to get in the way. Monsters and sonic screwdrivers were a bit more than he was prepared to deal with right now. There was an awful rumbling noise filling the sewer, and he could feel it vibrating in his chest. What on earth was going on?

But as he turned to run, wanting to put as much space between him and that _thing_ as possible, his head connected with a metal railing he’d failed to spot earlier. He cried out and fell forward as pain burst through his skull, but instead of hitting concrete, he fell into blackness.

'Doctor, help!'

* * *

 

‘She should be ok now, Doctor, the wound’s clean. Are you sure you don’t want me to wait?’

There was a dull ache in his skull. He wondered if that was why Rory’s voice sounded so slow and distant.

‘I can handle it. I’ll take you two home first, we probably don’t want to move Charlie just yet.’

No, he didn’t want to move yet. This was comfortable, and there was a soft pillow, and the bed didn’t have springs poking into his back like the one at the care home.

‘True. I suppose there’s no point waiting around for her to wake up. You know what to look for when someone’s concussed, right?’

He could hear footsteps now, fading away, and he had half a mind to open his eyes and ask them to stay. But he was exhausted, and by the time the haze in his brain had cleared, the voices were gone.

He opened his eyes. The first thing he spotted was a glass of water on the bench beside him — he slowly lifted himself into a sitting position and took a drink. There wasn’t much else in the room except for what looked like a first-aid kit, and as his eyes began to adjust, he could see through the open door into a room he definitely didn’t recognise. The Doctor was bustling around a large machine or something, fiddling with buttons.

Confused, he pulled the sheets away and stood up. Nothing else seemed to hurt much — he felt like he might have a few bruises from the fall, but it hadn’t been that bad. Charlie felt heat rise to his cheeks as he thought about it. He’d completely passed out from a little knock to the head, in front of three people he didn’t even know and who’d had to take care of him.

What a day. Sewers, sonic screwdrivers, and here he was, still in school uniform, needing to make up an excuse as to why he'd miss curfew, probably.

He wandered out the door into the room, which was filled with flashing lights, and as he did, he noticed a faint hum that seemed to come from the walls themselves. The machine he’d spotted earlier was really more of a control desk, like on a plane, but it was very different to anything he’d seen before. It seemed to stretch right around in a circle, and the Doctor was hopping about, pulling at levers and talking to himself.

‘Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Yes, I know we have to take him back, but surely you can tell me something about him, old girl? No, of course not, he’s not a replacement to Amy and Rory. He’s just a kid who had an accident, I had to let him on board.’

‘Who’re you talking to?’ Charlie had climbed up the steps leading to this console whatever, taking the Doctor completely by surprise.

‘Oh, the TARDIS, it’s nothing, she doesn’t really talk back anyway.’

‘TARDIS?’ He felt like this whole day had been a series of missing facts and unbelievable circumstances.

‘This. The ship. We’re on a spaceship, and I’m an alien. And you got knocked out running away from an alien. Ok with that?’ The Doctor straightened his bow tie and moved forward, as though concerned Charlie would pass out again.

‘Aliens? Are you sure I’m not still dreaming?’

‘Very sure. That thing we ran from was a Raglofax. Soul-sucking, cave-dwelling alien from another dimension. Amy picked you up when you fell, but we managed to force it back through to where it came from. Which we owe you for, we couldn’t have found that portal without you, they tend to only pop up in dark, damp places.’

He wasn’t sure why the Doctor would lie. There wasn’t anyone else around, and Charlie didn’t feel he was important enough for someone to make up such a huge story for him. Which only left him with the option of believing him.

‘Alright. What about Amy and Rory? Were they aliens?’

‘No no no, humans, married, we go on adventures and stuff and then I drop them home and they do normal life stuff, I think. Go shopping, do gardening, kissing, you know.’

‘Must be nice,’ he mumbled, leaning against the railing. Normal life stuff would be great. Not this nonsense, busing back and forth from the care home to school and back again every day, having gum thrown at you, listening to everyone from the lunch lady to his Biology teacher misgender him.

‘Are you feeling alright, Charlie?’

The Doctor moved forward to rest a hand on his shoulder, and that was when it hit him.

‘You called me ‘he’, before. When you were talking to the— thing.’ He gestured towards the console. No one had  _ever_ used the right pronouns before — Charlie wondered why it had taken him so long to notice.

‘I did.’

‘But, earlier, when I was lying down in that room, Rory said ‘she’, didn’t he?’ The Doctor sighed, and flipped a lever on the console, nodding.

‘I think he did, yes. Come on, come here.’

With a click of his fingers, a set of doors swung open to reveal the night sky. But as the Doctor led him over, Charlie realised that it wasn’t the sky, it was _everything_. They were in _space_.

‘Why do you think I’m a boy?’ No one else believed him. How would the Doctor even know?

‘I won’t pretend that I’m an excellent person to talk to about feelings and serious things,’ he said, as they sat down in the doorway, waggling his finger. ‘Actually, I probably don’t do a good job of talking about anything. Everything’s so much more complicated than it needs to be. I’m a Time Lord. Gender is… different, to us. I can see it. You know how neon signs glow?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, forget about that, it’s a different sort of glow. You’re a boy, because I can _see_ it. I didn’t say anything to Amy and Rory because, well, humans act weirdly about gender. I’ve spent enough time with them to know that sometimes, especially in the early millennia for you lot, people aren’t always open about their gender. Sometimes you have to hide it, if who you are doesn't match what everyone else expects you to be. I didn’t know if you were hiding it. Are you?’

Charlie had to stop and consider all of this for a moment. This morning he didn’t even believe people needed breakfast. Now here he was, in space, with an alien telling him that he was ok, that he really was a boy.

‘I’m not hiding. Not really. But no one believes me, except you now. I’m just a kid who lives in a care home, a girls’ home, so of course I can’t be a boy.’

‘Nonsense. There’s nothing to believe. You _are_ a boy, and you just saved your whole town from a soul-sucking alien. You’re brilliant, and you’re you, and don’t let anyone say otherwise.’

‘Please don't take me back,’ Charlie muttered. ‘Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to go back there. You’re the only person who’s ever even treated me like a real person.’

He didn’t want to beg, but he also knew that he couldn’t go back just yet. For the first time in his life, he felt like himself. 

‘You know what? We can have some fun. I’ll show you that the universe isn’t all like that, and you’ll be back home for bedtime.’

'Thanks for, you know, looking after me. I reckon I might have a lump on my head in a bit.'

'You've already got a huge purple bruise, makes you look like an alien already.'

They laughed, and Charlie let his feet dangle in space, wondering how he'd been so lucky.


End file.
